🏗️Walls
Learn how to draw walls on maps with Hamina Network Planner.
Drawing walls is one of the most important parts of creating a wireless predictive model. The walls help Hamina "see" where the obstructions are, so it can accurately predict signal propagation on the map.
Drawing Walls
Click on Draw Walls > Draw Walls in the toolbar.
Left-click once to start drawing a wall segment.
Left-click again to place the wall segment.
Continue left-clicking to chain multiple wall segments together.
Right-click to stop drawing walls.
While drawing walls, hold down the space bar and move the mouse to pan. Since this panning method doesn't require any mouse clicks, it works great during wall drawing.
Automatic Wall Tracing
As a beta feature, Hamina Network Planner can automatically trace walls on floor plans of indoor, "carpeted" space such as offices and schools. In warehouses, manufacturing environments, stadiums, outdoor maps, or on maps of low quality (like those that are meant for indoor navigation, and aren't for architectural or engineering purposes), manual drawing will be required.
This feature is in beta, so it is incomplete, subject to change, and is highly likely to break or have major bugs. Don't rely on it for production work yet!
Enable Automatic Scale, Scope and Wall Tracing Beta
In the Account menu in the upper right, select Preferences.
Select the Beta Features tab.
Check Enable Automatic Scale, Scope and Wall Tracing beta.
Automatically Trace Walls
Upload a new map to Hamina Network Planner.
Hamina Network Planner will attempt to detect the scale of the map, as indicated by the Analyzing Scale... message next the scale marker.
Once the scale analysis is complete, the scale marker will return to normal, but with a robot emoji 🤖, letting you know that the map is using an automatic scale.
Next, Hamina Network Planner will auto-trace the walls. When the tracing has been completed, a sparkle emoji ✨ will appear on the Walls tool. At this point, open the Walls tool.
The Walls pane will appear, where you can select between Draw and Auto-draw. With Auto-draw selected, you can change the material type for auto-detected walls and doors, and see a preview of the automatic walls on the map. When you're ready, click the Auto-draw walls button.
Further assign specific wall types by using the Edit tool to click, drag, and select groups of walls. Then use the Edit Walls pane or hotkeys to assign walls with hotkeys as desired.
Custom Wall Types
While Hamina includes some pre-set wall types to get you started, it's a great idea to change the existing profiles, or create your own to make the predictive model as accurate as possible.
Measuring Walls
While the built-in defaults in Hamina are a good starting point, it's a great idea to take measurements of the walls in the real world, and input them into Hamina to increase the accuracy of the design. Modifying walls in one project does not affect your other Hamina projects.
Use a piece of hardware to create a 5 GHz network. This could be as complex as an AP-on-a-stick setup, or as simple as a 5 GHz hotspot on a smartphone. The idea is simply to create beacons in the 5 GHz band.
Post the AP 3 to 5 meters away from the wall that you want to measure. Signal strength tends to drop off quickly within the first two meters, making it more difficult to get accurate measurements.
Use a device that can measure RSSI, such as a Wi-Fi scanner (Wi-Fi Explorer Pro, MetaGeek inSSIDer), real-time packet analysis tool (MetaGeek Tonic), or handheld Wi-Fi measurement device (NetAlly AirCheck G2 or G3), or our very own Hamina Onsite + Oscium Nomad. Take a signal strength measurement on the close side of the wall. Note the signal strength.
Take a signal strength measurement on the far side of the wall, and make note of it.
Subtract the first signal strength from the second. For example, if you saw -60 dBm on the close side, and -68 dBm on the far side, then you saw 8 dB of loss.
If you'd like, take several measurements and average them out before inputting them into Hamina. The more measurements you take, the more accurate Hamina's predictions will be, overall.
We recommend identifying the 3 to 5 most common types of walls in the building, getting measurements for them, and inputting them into Hamina. That should give you reasonable accuracy, without taking too much time gathering data.
Adding and Modifying Wall Profiles
With the Draw Walls tool activated, the Draw Walls pane will appear on the right. Click on the Add or Modify button at the bottom.
The Wall Editor window will appear. From here, you can:
Edit existing wall profiles (click on the profile to edit it)
Duplicate wall profiles to create your own (click the Duplicate button in the wall profile)
Create your own (click the Add a custom wall button)
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